Scammer 2.0 - Wolfgang Beltracchi: The German forger

[Music] Cologne in Germany 27th of October 2011 journalists from around the world had gathered at the city's courthouse today judge villain Kramer is to deliver his verdict on an extraordinary case of art forgery separatists had fun begin from the start this trial has had a lot of media coverage and there's been a lot of speculation this is the trial of Wolfgang belt rocky who forged dozens of paintings and sold them around the world he passed these paintings off as works by major artists such as Fennell leche or Max Ernst every time both king Pataki needed some money then he painted a new fake to get the money and then he would live for a few months very good very nice major fraud which made him massive sums of money at least 35 million euros and all four paintings which were declared fake by the courts for 30 years the forger along with a few accomplices managed to fool the experts the auction houses the art dealers and major collectors [Music] he worked with his wife heléne they were the Bonnie and Clyde of the art world intoxicated by the excitement in order to hoodwink the art world which took itself so seriously the couple came up with an incredibly far-fetched scenario if somebody would do this in a film everybody would say oh come on this is not plausible but in reality it is from Paris to Cologne via Berlin London and Geneva we went to meet all those who came into contact with Wolfgang felt rocky and his forged paintings they all talked about an egocentric man who was very sure of himself and a real expert on the art market he was so sure of himself that he probably thought he was as good as the painters he was imitating the aim behind it all was financial gain today Wolfgang belt rocky gives the impression of being a real expert on painting he is guarded and very selective about any media appearances I think bedrock he wants to control his his legions and his biography he doesn't want other people to to write about him too openly - he was he wants to hide some of his stories this is the true story of Wolfgang belt rocky the Prince of forges [Music] Wolfgang Bell track II was born wolfgang fischer in a germany that was being completely rebuilt after the war on 4th of February 1951 here in Guilin Curtain a small town in the north of the country both gangs mother was a private tutor his father filum Fisher had an unusual job which made a lasting impression on the young wolf gang he restored paintings in the region's churches welcomed by trucky said that already from childhood only started to draw entertained because he was surrounded by people who were working with paint he said with the exception of his oldest brother everybody was painting in the family so he said it was like brushing your teeth so and every day he was drawing and painting after the war life in Germany was hard to make a bit of extra cash bill and Fisher had a second job in the evenings in his studio he copied works by the great masters which he then sold at the market paintings by Rembrandt says AM and Picasso the young Wolfgang spent long hours in this studio silently watching his father one day in 1965 villain Fisher issued his son with a challenge he gave him a postcard of a work by Pablo Picasso first hang was fourteen he started painting his first copy [Music] welcome back Rakhi said he copied it in such a good way that he surprised his father because he even didn't just copy it but he made it even better he perfected it in certain details and he said his father was really completely overwhelmed when he saw it and almost angry so he said but that's probably just a legend that his father stopped copying and painting for almost two years because he was so upset that his son had surpassed him I don't know whether the father ever imagined that his son would become one of the most successful art forgers in the history of art in the 1960s both gang Fisher was a teenager growing up in a radically changing Germany to a soundtrack of pop and psychedelic rock the culture and morals were becoming less strict in 1968 at the age of 17 those gang just like all young people in Germany was fascinated by this evolving counterculture late 60s early 70s there were the the rebellion the hippie movement and so on and no Afghan fuscia was quickly a part of this movement he was he was a hippie after a few years at art school for skank Fisher got bored [Music] in terms of travel and freedom and despite an obvious talent for painting he dropped out of college without any qualifications [Music] he grew his hair long and his girlfriend at the time gave him a harley-davidson the same as the one Peter Fonda rode in Easy Rider an iconic film for the hippie generation for Wolfgang Fischer that marked the start of a decade of drug-fueled wandering across Europe marginal to the last he took one drug after another he was smoking pot and he was he he also smoked some opium at one time and he he did a lot of LSD during the 1970s wolfgang fischer lived for a while in Berlin and Paris and then London Amsterdam and Majorca she never really worked but he had to make a bit of money for his trips that was when he started painting copies of great masters just like his father had done he sold these copies for a few hundred marks at flea markets he was doing pavement paintings in order to gain money and he boasts even that he earned more than his father he said he gained 100 Demark day while his father earned in a month's 900 day mark so you can tell that he was very proud in surpassing his father wolfgang fischer was now 27 and he sometimes went to work on his own creations rather than copying other artists in 1978 three of his paintings were exhibited in a museum in Munich in Germany these were surrealist paintings worked in a photorealistic style acrylic on a canvas and yeah there must have been in a certain way modestly even successful because he was exhibited in the house a kunst in 1978 the young painter managed to sell one of his canvases for 15,000 marks which equates to about 8,000 euros one gallery even offered him a contract at that stage the Frank fish's life could have taken a different turn but he refused to sign he wasn't interested in being an artist he was lazy and preferred the simple life and traveling to the hard and precarious work of a professional painter if you're an artist who has to do his art you know you usually don't earn a lot of money in the first decades of your career so you really have to you you work on your on your artwork and you live for it and you don't have any money you you somehow have to survive it was not interested in working hard he wanted to gain quick money he wanted to have a nice lifestyle so he realized it would be much easier to fake paintings than to create own paintings Wolfgang Fischer was now 30 he settled in Dusseldorf at the start of the 1980s this was where he truly became a forger tired of living on very little he wanted to earn more money he started copying paintings that were better known in the art world with a view to selling them in specialist auction houses these works were carefully selected for their style [Music] welcome but rocky was quite clever when it came to the choice of artists he faked because he knew it would have been very difficult to take the really famous artists like I don't know a van Gogh [ __ ] and whare something like that so he was quite clever because he choose if you like the b-grade artists which were important but which are not as famous as the big ones Thomas say/do worked at Christie's one of the world's biggest auction houses he was in charge of modern and impressionist art collections and without realizing it years later he hand out some paintings Wolfgang Bell Jackie had forged [Music] give the Seleucia what he did was follow which movement sold well from a commercial point of view and it's true that surrealism German and Austrian art and Fauvism were three movements which were big sellers when he was working and forging paintings but it was another idea a stroke of genius which allowed Phil Frank Fisher to really begin his career as a forger because he knew straight copies of paintings were very risky so he developed a hitherto unknown technique he started painting originals painted in the style of four that he used what were known as catalogue raisonné which were sort of comprehensive inventory of an artist's works and in these catalogs of works by artists there would be certain paintings which had disappeared and never been photographed all you had was their title size and a simple description introducing technique a sabbatical year he used a technique which was quite unusual and very clever he recreated paintings which had been lost but which were known to have existed at some stage they were usually illustrated in a catalogue raisonné with blank squares he was going through the catalogues of these exhibitions reading seeing where elack's where people where our missing links in the documentation and that's exactly where positioned his face fakes then and he reinterpreted them using the same size of canvas and the same title for his paintings which showed a vast knowledge of the work of each artist he copied because he did it remarkably well in order to paint in the style of both gang pushed his technique to the limit to the point of getting under the skin of the artists he was imitating [Music] he said he wasn't just looking at the paintings of the artists he would Forge but he would really try to get everything on their lives at a certain period up to listening to the music they were listening up to finding out with whom where they're talking what was their habit in everyday life and then really getting into the mind of the painter Pranay allonge is a police commissioner in the Crime Squad in Berlin he was in charge of Wolfgang Fischer's arrest the stinky Shawn mitten Crimson DFL inverter he really immersed himself in the work of the artist he was copying he read a lot about them he went to various places to soak up the atmosphere and to see the landscapes for himself no other forger had ever shown such inventiveness and imagination in their long-term plan to dupe the market but once these forgeries had been painted by both gang Fisher he needed to find a way of selling them on the art market in the spring of 1985 a chance encounter was to allow the forger to dupe the auction houses here in this cafe in the town of Krefeld he met the man who was to become one of the key characters in his ruse auto shelter Kellen Gauss essential to quasi anyone who met auto shelter described him as being or at least appearing to be more serious and more rigorous than Wolfgang go trucky author short akela house was somebody who always were ahead and and long black coat and he was a chic gentleman verse Kang was seduced by the charisma of his new friend and ended up telling him about his activity as a forger a pact was made vers gang would paint the pictures and otto would take care of selling them on the art market the heart is the hellish sue from China foreign Lagann fans I'm all fleeting here the fact that he had a presence and was cultured meant that he was taken seriously by the dealers as worn he didn't have to convince them of his expertise he certainly had a lot of contacts with Ian - he's buggy isn't he was in no way a stranger to the art world with this alliance both gang went from being a petty criminal to a major criminal the collaboration between the two men soon bore fruit auto shelters gift of the gab worked a treat in the art world and with this setup the to manage to dupe numerous professionals some of the duo's best sellers were forgeries of paintings by German expressionist here Hannes Molson an artist who had fled Nazi Germany in 1938 leaving behind him numerous paintings which of today disappeared and are not known about imitating Mulsanne style first gang Fisher would paint forgeries in his studio and then otto would come up with a story to explain their reappearance the duo shifted a dozen paintings and the sale prices far exceeded those Fisher had charged at the flea markets one of the fake Mulsanne's made them almost 41 thousand euros the auction houses didn't suspect a thing the style had been perfectly imitated from the breadth of the brushstrokes down to the quantity of paint used the forger showed real precision he had been careful to find out what sort of checks were carried out during the sales of valuable paintings in laboratories such as this one in London canvases are analyzed in great detail Nicholas Easter is the scientist two years later uncovered Wolfgang Fischer's forgeries we're looking for materials that might be appropriate for that particular time or not so things that are anachronistic say so we're taking samples analyzing in detail to identify say certain pigments that were only introduced after the supposed date of the painting x-rays carbon dating tests on the wood the canvas and the pigments everything is scrutinized down to the last detail to make sure he slipped through the net first gank Fisher chose his pigments carefully and got hold of very old canvases [Music] he would buy old paintings at flea markets he would take off the paint from the canvas and then he would paint it with a new painting don't you love a that way his materials would guaranteed to be from the right era that meant he could more accurately produce a painting that looked original and he was incredibly bold when it came to testing how convincing his fakes were he even sent some of his forgeries to labs such as this one to make sure he passed the scientific tests he's also said that he produced a test paintings that he would pass by a couple of laboratories anything that was that came up as being wrong he would eliminate from his palette by the end of the 1980s this was all volcanic fissure did he painted canvases in waves according to his financial needs sometimes several a year sometimes ten a month these paintings weren't yet fetching record sums but another encounter was to change everything in 1992 the skank Fisher was living on the outskirts of Cologne he met a young woman aged 34 Helen Bell track II she was blonde with blue eyes charming and passionate about art Helen was struck by volsangs charisma and soon fell under his charm [Music] Beatrice Bray was later a neighbor and close friend of the belt Rockies she is very familiar with the couple's story [Music] suppose I saw uncle I think it might have been love at first sight I can't be sure of that but the way he told the story it sounded as if it was love at first sight yes in 1993 they got married both gang Fisher took his wife's surname and became vote gang belt Rakhi it was the start of an explosive partnership [Music] they met and fallen laughs and they became a laughs couple that was also like Bonnie and Clyde they yeah a criminal capital from the start and then uncovered her husband's secret on the walls of his house she noticed several paintings dating from the start of the 20th century from early on he told her he and that attracted her to she was attracted by this criminal guy who has the secret the young bride made a decision to assist her husband in this major alert fraud between them they came up with an unthinkable scenario an inspired idea which was to enable them to sell paintings for millions of euros a ploy in which they showed no hesitation in exploiting the darkest part of their country's history in the 1930s in Germany under the Nazi regime numerous works of art disappeared in 1937 Hitler was always against modern German art and so he gave the order to confiscate all modern art in all the German museums the beltran keys were interested in one collection in particular that of Alfred flecked I'm an art dealer who had suddenly fled the country in 1933 leaving behind him a whole part of his collection revenge is the only expert in the world to have studied the life of this collector effortless time was not one of the most important art dealers and and gallerists in germany was Jewish and the travels didn't like Jews next time had very great difficulties with a right-wing movement numerous paintings by great masters were confiscated from Fleck Times collection by the Nazis after he fled paintings which no one had seen for over 60 years both gang and Helene wanted to make these paintings reappear on the market because they knew that for this type of work the sale prices were colossal but in order to do that they first had to invent a plausible scenario [Music] so they came up with the simple idea of using Helens grandfather Verna Yeager's as a teenager he had lived next door to the art dealer alfred Fleck time the two men never met but the BAL trackies imagined a fictional scenario where the collector had sold herlands grandfather numerous paintings for a song okay and Yeager supposedly hid them because obviously these were considered during the war and under the Nazi regime to be degenerate works then by force of circumstance they were discovered later much later by his descendants his grandchildren who finally decided to sell them one by one that was the gist of the story it was the perfect scenario but in order to make it credible there was one detail missing proof of authenticity from a photo of alfred Fleck time Wolfgang felt rocky made this label which he stuck on the back of the forged paintings he put some tea on it he put some some some some and and and he artificially aged that the label it's hard to believe it but this simple label was enough to convince the experts and whenever any expert appeared suspicious the couple showing incredible daring had no hesitation in fabricating increasingly far-fetched pieces of evidence in 1995 when the couple were looking to sell this forged painting girl with a swan by heinrich camp and on an auction house asked them for proof of the veracity of their story helen but rocky came up with this old yellowed photograph with jagged edges it showed a woman whom she claimed was her grandmother josephine Yeager's sitting in front of the paintings in the supposedly rediscovered collection in reality the snapshot was completely fake damn the belt hockey's Serena Zahavi Newton met order the belt Rockies have constructed the image to look like an old photograph with the grandmother sitting down and in the background the supposedly original paintings and Giggy Nala but in reality the woman sitting on that chair was helene dressed in period costume kameez astonishing as it sounds everybody believed these photos to be authentic and as the fake period photograph was so well done that even members of her Lane's family didn't recognize her if somebody would do this in a film everybody would say oh come on this is not plausible but in reality it is it's in a way very funny in a way very sick in October 1995 Christie's put girl with Swan up for auction [Music] it was bought for $100,000 without anyone questioning its authenticity we could if we were completely taken in yes we were getting used to the name Verner Yeager's and it even became a sought-after provenance because we knew it was quite a rare provenance and these paintings had an incredible history and must have remained hidden for a very long time it's crazy but it shows how much you can believe in things if you want to and I think that's exactly the point nobody would have thought that somebody would be so crazy to do such things such a stunt where everybody would say immediately this will be detected nobody will believe in women a woman posing as her own grandmother but avoid the bell trackies grew more and more confident they were no longer afraid to tackle the big names in painting with the time what can be tackled it better his ego grew so much that he also fake now like the big names of artistry Max Ernst fell normally j-mac space time and the big now he was trying to get the millions not a few thousand euros by 1995 all the prestigious auction houses like Sotheby's Christie's drew and LEM pets in Germany were without realizing it selling numerous forgeries supposedly from the flextime collection the reappearance of certain paintings even provoked a certain euphoria on the market this was a real treasure trove everyone wanted to play a part in its discovery that question if you call it's always exciting when things that haven't been seen between 1914 and 2006 suddenly reappear you think this must be a masterpiece resurfacing and you get caught up in the emotion of it all you're a bit naive it was human error based on a fundamental desire to believe in the story because the story was wonderful and thinking you've hit the jackpot or found the Holy Grail or uncovered an old collection is every dealers dream that's where Wolfgang belt rocky was so clever he knew which buttons depressed to win over everyone in the art market and to lend his works a certain credibility some of the art historians who were hired to evaluate these forgeries are today being blamed for their lack of vigilance an expert is an important figure because they were in the very end often decisive if painting was accepted or not one of those experts was varnish piece a major specialist on Max Ernst and the former director of the museo nacional d'art moderne at paris the honor spits a varnish Spees was considered to be the world expert on max ernst he wrote the catalogue raisonné he was a leading light in the art world in total varnish peace authenticated seven works by Max Ernst which were in reality forgeries by both gang belt rocky he added them to the catalogue raisonné and issued certificates of authenticity the art historian earned a total of four hundred thousand euros for his expertise he assumed he was paid a fee for his services Chucky paid him a commission on the first sale of each painting and that caused problems there should not be one expert who can tell wrong or right by only looking at a painting there should be Committees of of experts who are debating the authenticity of a painting despite the precautions they took in 1998 both gang and Helen Val tracky came very close to being found out a collector had doubts about the authenticity of a painting and the German police set up an inquiry I've got Pataki left Germany when he heard the police was looking for him and so on the bail trackies quickly sold their house and set off in their camper van according to Renea launched the german police officer in charge of the investigation there was no doubt about it Wolfgang wanted to flee the country that's done it's the in befogging voice when we wanted to question him he must have fled to France his version is quite different but I am convinced that he felt we were on his trail and we couldn't find him in France the witnesses who saw him last said he was going on a round-the-world trip he travelled around and he finally found this beautiful spot and southern France and where a lot of artists have worked a lot of artists he admired or faked it was hearing mez a small town in aro that Wolfgang Helen and their two children finally settled the German police eventually forgot about them and closed the investigation in 1999 the Bell trackies bought this old mansion and did it up locals started wondering about their fortune how did the Bell trackies earn so much money [Music] he talked about a big house he had done up and sold for a very good price people just thought they had money but they were people of independent means and a lock and key in his studio in domain derivate first gang bell track he continued painting in secret in 2000 the art market was experiencing a boom in Cologne Berlin Geneva Paris and London well trackies four trees were selling like hotcakes every time a Frank Pataki needed some money then he painted a new fake to get the money and then he would live for a few months redo it this is a fake on trade around depicting the port of Cooley or a gallery bought it for three hundred and seventy thousand euros in 2000 [Music] this one is more abstract and attributed to the German painter Max Ernst [Music] it's old along with another fake for over a million euros in 2002 this very beautiful painting portrait of a woman in a hat is a perfect imitation of the style of Dutch painter ki-sun Dongmin it sold in 2007 for 1.5 million euros in the auction houses business was booming Wolfgang Puck rocky spent the first decade of the century quietly painting his forgeries in the South of France thanks to the collaboration of Auto Show to Kelling house who still handled their distribution the paintings were changing hands all over the world by has included rich businessman and investment funds but a few celebrities were also duped by the forger very famous persons who bought paintings that were forged by Wolfgang Pataki des for instance the actor Steve Martin who bought a fake um donk and who resold it very fast then there was for instance Daniel Philippe a key French publisher gt4 near Daniel philippic yearly book the market on the mistress I found Daniel Philip a key at the time of my investigation in 2013 to ask him how he felt about it all and his immediate reaction was surprising and very sporting he said that guy is a genius his painting is very beautiful very accomplished I hung it in my New York apartment but in the end I decided to take it down the painting sold and then resold after a while no one knew where they'd come from that was one of the keys to the Belle trackies success the couple understood how opaque the art market is transactions are kept under wraps for fear of the taxman art market is for some people like a washing machine for dirty money a laundry machine and so the people don't ask many questions they don't make contracts you just do the business by handshake it was a muddle which benefited everyone especially when it came to tax evasion the forges business had become very lucrative with the sale of one or two paintings a year both gang Belle track II was now living in luxury in 2005 he bought a second home 450 square meters in Freiburg they bought a house in Freiburg a nice beautiful house on on a hill overlooking fire book and one of the most most expensive neighborhoods of hi book and they let it rebuild this house for hundreds of thousands of euros they built a wonderful swimming pool both gang felt rocky now had a lifestyle that was very far removed from his original hippie ideals I don't think hippies drink fine wine and champagne it wasn't part of that culture they had a very nice life they may have looked like hippies but these were upmarket hippies [Music] the couple even resorted to cosmetic surgery and treated themselves to facelifts why Frank Pataki not only faked paintings but he also faked his own face he had a face lifting done and he even spoke about it to a German magazine back then and saying it is so nice to have a new young face during these years of opulence the belt Rockies lived the high life taking holidays in the world's most beautiful palaces they spent lavishly he would travel a lot he would travel to the nicest hotels in the world I saw the credit card account of him and he would stay at the nicest hotels and buy at the nicest boutiques and have a really posh life perhaps all this luxury went to his head but despite his perfectly honed techniques as a forger Wolfgang belt rocky was to commit a fatal error he couldn't stop the greed was too big and he thought he's unavailable on the 29th of November 2006 in LEM feds auction house in Cologne a forged painting signed Heinrich compen dog was sold its title red painting with horses the painting went for 2.8 million euros a record sum for a compen dog in reality it was a forgery painted by Wolfgang belt rocky sofia comer OVA is the director of a gallery in Geneva it was she who triggered the downfall of the greatest forger in history [Music] it started with a phone call from one of the gallery's clients who informed me that he had just bought a masterpiece by campin donk that he had done it of his own accord and I would be proud of his choice Sofia komarovo was asked by her client to oversee the transaction since the price of the painting was so high she was very vigilant about its provenance I immediately fetched the catalog as only from the gallery's library and I saw that usually very detailed information is given whereas this painting was just listed as being some landscape with red horses painted in 1914 with no dimensions photos or anything her suspicions aroused she noticed the label on the back of the painting she wanted to know more about this mysterious collection so she phoned route hench the only expert in the world on Alfred Fleck time kitu was suspicious of this portrait affixed to the frame of the painting it was awful I mean I mean fleshed have never would have allowed two to be reproduced so stupidly I mean he looks like an idiot he looks like and it's terrible it's it's a it's a terrible portrait the inspired idea which had allowed the belt Rockies to pull off this incredible stunt was now turning against them this label was arousing everyone's suspicions sophia comer over had the painting delivered to london to nicholas ii stores laboratory when he first examined this painting he had no idea of the scale of the network he was helping to dismantle it was almost another routine job if you like so it came in with certain questions that I was trying to answer it didn't signal something particularly unusual as far as we're concerned first he analyzed the label the results came in thick and fast the glue used was too recent it didn't correspond to the date of the painting and the presence of traces of coffee on the paper were very suspect they seemed to indicate that an attempt had been made to artificially age the label then Nicholas Easter took his first samples of paint and soon there was no doubt about it this painting was a fake in this instance one of the pigments that we identified with something called titanium dioxide white and this is a pigment that was essentially an introduction of the 20th century we don't typically find on paintings before the mid 20th century news of a series of fake paintings spread like wildfire after the discovery of this fake campin donk all paintings from the now nefarious Fleck time collection came under scrutiny [Music] once you had detected one forgery suddenly like a sort of a golden or if you like red threat suddenly all these forgeries were lined up on like a pearl on the strings and suddenly all these paintings became doubtful within a fortnight the expert Ralph hench had identified and located about 15 fake paintings bearing the flex time label in a couple of weeks I had all the informations of the max irons of other camp and dongs and I saw the same framing I saw the same labels and for me it was very clear at the time there are all fakes the police started an investigation and there were a lot of people now trying to find out who is the forger of these paintings as well as their start so much of present yet had not India shown when we presented our case to the prosecution department it already included five forgeries and on several million euros worth of fraud this was not the sort of case to come up every day so we soon realized that it would take on massive proportions the art market was stunned to discover the scale of the scandal panic spreads through all the major auction houses yo so Lamar said lava there was chaos on the art market everyone quickly tried to identify whether there were any other candidates and which other paintings had a similar provenance to see whether they had passed through our hands or not von Neumann ba everybody was already thinking oh my god if this is true what would that mean because that was like a domino play one stone would tackle the other and you would have a display of a scandal of a huge huge dimension the fraud became obvious people realized that bell trackies paintings had a certain style in common mr. Jenner believed that ruby the more I remember seeing the paintings at the laboratory we were comparing a camp and ankh and a Duran it was interesting to see them side-by-side and to compare them for similarities these weren't great quality paintings but the packaging the way the nails were rusted and the labels aged the canvas it was remarkably well done the police gathered together several witnesses gradually they identified the gang of forgers on the 25th of August 2010 they searched first auto shelter keling houses house and then the BAL Trekkies house in freiburg the couple were eventually arrested that same evening in their car the authorities didn't know who they were dealing with they obviously weren't expecting to be dealing with a chic couple in their 60s so it was a strong-arm arrest with sirens wailing american-style astonishment envious dazzle wished it's a tuna we didn't know who we were dealing with them it's the Lindo varnish Wendy's man suspects left their property in a large four-wheel drive car the star couldn't do cooling ham then let's in there were four people inside and it was raining heavily that day my colleagues had arrest warrants the suspects should have handed themselves in but that clearly wasn't going to happen so we had to go and bring them in for questioning whilst they were awaiting their verdict the well trackies were detained in cologne to prepare for the trial Renea launched and his teams assembled all the evidence the paintings old tubes of paint stretchers and rolled up canvases books on the artists and catalogue raisonné on the 1st of September 2011 the belt Rocky's trial began at the Court of Justice in Cologne that puts us at from begin unfilled and from the start the trial got a lot of media coverage there was a lot of speculation the general public generally feels some sort of sympathy for this type of character there is skill involved even if it's a skill of a forger he had figured out how to profit from the naivety and greed or whatever of people who have a lot of money like Bonnie and Clyde the two defendants played up to the cameras journalists were almost won over by this couple of long-haired hipsters these Robin hood-like characters who stole from the rich the first day of they seemed very very happy with the way they were enjoying the bath in in public they suddenly became very famous the trial which began in 2011 promised to be long complex and wide reaching the case file was massive 8000 odd pages long about 200 witnesses were expected to be called but it was soon a huge anticlimax the trial lasted only 10 days they just had a handful of testimonies being invited and the case was closed quite quickly because there was a so-called deal between the pair trockie lawyers and the court the first day of the trial that he admitted yes I painted those 14 paintings the judge was satisfied with that confession and the verdict was given both gang and Helen must reimburse the colossal sum of 35 million euros to their victims they were sentenced to six and four years respectively in prison as for Otto he got five years behind bars as is often the case in Germany the culprits were only partially incarcerated they had to stay at the prison at night but they and day time they could stay at their home and work some professionals in the art world seemed quite satisfied with the outcome of the trial the sooner the case was closed the sooner it would be forgotten [Music] no one really wants to reveal what goes on behind the scenes in the art market [Music] there were thousands of people in the art world very happy that this trial wasn't going on long Jimmy Snuka photography the art market has never felt very comfortable dealing with fakes and forges there has never been an open discussion on the subject I think people are afraid of being ridiculed or being identified as someone who was taken in by the veldt Rocky's birth gang and Elaine belt rocky were released from prison in January 2015 they now live in this house in a residential neighborhood of cologne the courts seized 1 million euros from their Swiss bank account the house in Freiburg has been sold and a remainder Evette has been mortgaged and yet according to Tobias Tim who followed the case very closely the resolution of the bowel Trekkie scandal is not very clear Afghan Pataki earned millions of euros with his forgeries where all the money has gone is unclear until today to date over 60 paintings have been uncovered and identified as being forgeries by vult gang they'll tracky forgeries for which the forger has still never been tried and he claims to have painted between 200 and 300 fakes over the course of his career since his release from prison he has stopped forging paintings and has decided to capitalize on his incredible story now famous he has made numerous TV appearances and is fast becoming a legend the Burt Rockies are now selling their story if you like so their touring through the talk shows in in Germany there are parts of movies and films documentaries about them finally be exposed in a way because he now could tell the whole world what what a genius torture he is but when it comes to going a bit further and telling the true story Wolfgang belt rocky had refused to respond to any communication we rang the doorbell of his home in studio in cologne but no one answered we approached him on several occasions for an interview but the couple their lawyers and even his publisher refused to grant us one you are not allowed to use or to show any unauthorized material of our clients here in his studio the artist is now concentrating on his own paintings which he sells for up to twelve thousand dollars a piece paintings which have received a somewhat lukewarm response to say the least I was really disappointed by what I saw so far because it even looks weak on a technical scale he's not at all talented as far as I'm concerned nothing has changed he remains mediocre in his own artistic output perhaps that's why I vote gang belt rocky refused to let us show his paintings in our documentary today he's selective about the appearances he makes and is building his own legend that of an aging hippie a talented artist who was simply pleasing himself never mind the millions of euros he stole along the way [Music] [Applause] [Music] you you

Channel: Show Me the World

Views: 297,123

Keywords: documentary, art, picasso, documentaries, artist, forger, forgery, art scam, Wolfgang Beltracchi, Helene Beltracchi, Max Ernst, Heinrich Campendonk, Fernand Léger, Kees van Dongen, Alfred Flechtheim, Wolfgang Fischer, scammer, criminal 2.0, scam, fraud, fraudster, counterfeiting, counterfeit, counterfeiter, fake

Id: 7WQyaKoWhjc

Length: 58min 19sec (3499 seconds)

Published: Sat Nov 30 2019